Multitasking Blues
One of the perks of being a part of this conceptual age is being connected 24/7. Thus, consciously or unconsciously we are multitasking through our smartphones all the time. For instance, a typical day at work always comprises of doing the daily assignments, answering to the emails or queries while we are at it and staying in touch with the current affairs and/or gossips by stalking people on the social media.
Although, smartphones and high-speed internet have done a very good job of bringing the world closer and connecting us with each other. But on the flip side, we are constantly working. No matter what, we often end up working or replying to an urgent email or a text after work hours. This makes our work life efficient and effective but working after hours eats up our personal time. Which means, we are often unable to give quality time to our loved ones. Thus, at the end of the day not only we are harming ourselves, but we tend to create a lot of unwanted drama with our loved ones due to the lack of time.
Unfortunately, even if we are not working, we tend to multitask regardless. For example, I often find myself playing games on my phone while watching TV and catching up with my friends on texts simultaneously. This means that I am not giving my undivided attention to my friends and loved ones. It is interesting to see how well humans have adapted to multitasking and we are so good at it now that we fail to see the downside of it.
By constantly multitasking not only we are damaging our health but are also damaging our relationships. Sometimes we are so caught up with the daily routine that we fail to give quality time to our significant others. It is very common to catch a partner texting, surfing on Facebook or watching videos on their tablets or computers while the other one assumes it to be their time and expects the partner to focus on them solely. This creates drama and notion of distress in a relationship.
In the year 2016 Dr. Melania Uncapher, a renowned Neurobiologist conducted a study called Multitasking and Memory. Her conclusions depicted that chronic media multitaskers are most likely to have weaker working and long-term memory. Moreover, a similar research conducted by Dr. Mona Moisala showed that the more people multitasked the more distracted they will be. That explains why some people tend to forget so easily and seem distracted during meaningful conversations.
When we think about multitasking we often imagine the workplace scenario, where we are bound to attend calls while driving or work on multiple projects at once. However, we often fail to realize that we tend to bring our multitasking habits at home and tend to treat our loved ones as a project and strive to multitask to accomplish goals. Unfortunately, maintaining a healthy relationship while multitasking heavily can be extremely tricky, due to the high expectations that your partner has from you. Thus, to have a healthy life and maintain healthy relationships we need to learn how to make time for ourselves, our loved ones and understand when to stop multitasking!
